John 6:51-58
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in a synagogue at Capernaum.
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I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
Behind the cottage where I’ve been staying in Northern Wales for the past few days is a high mountain with streams running down, fed by a mountaintop lake. Early yesterday morning, I went for a short hike up the side of the mountain. A little more than halfway up, there was a nice flat rock where I could sit and listen to the rushing water of the stream flowing by. For several minutes, I sat there with the sound of the water and the sensation of crisp air. And in this moment was the awareness of an aliveness that is deep within — an aliveness that doesn’t come from us, but that flows through us.
Over the last few weeks, the lectionary Gospel text has highlighted this teaching of Jesus that is often called “the bread of life” discourse and the opening line of the text this morning might be the highlight — “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”
Perhaps there are many ways of entering into this line, nevertheless, it has often led to exclusivists claims about Jesus and Jesus’ divinity. While I don’t want to refute that necessarily, I do want to suggest that there’s another way of receiving this passage.
At its heart lie two English words that, when understood from Jesus’ native language of Aramaic point to something much deeper: I am or Innana which can mean the I within the I or perhaps essence and bread or lachma — which can mean nourishment for body and also nourishment for the spirit. Furthermore, at the root of this word lachma is the another word, hma, that can mean Wisdom — the embodiment of the Divine feminine.
Taken together, perhaps we can hear this teaching not as an exclusivist claim of who Jesus is, but a deep teaching about who we are as human beings. At the core of human existence, there is an essence that is connected to nourishment, if we can only receive it.
Maybe this connection and this nourishment is easier to recall at times of inner quiet — when we can hear the gentle breeze or flowing water or tides coming in and out. Nevertheless, this connection is always present, always possible.
How do we experience this inner aliveness that flows through us? What would it be like to live from this source, allowing our nourishment to come from it?
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